


Those who Love Life

by Greer Watson (greerwatson)



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/Greer%20Watson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javier Vachon ponders his long unfriendship with the Inca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those who Love Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tolakasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/gifts).



> Writtten to the prompt: _There was never enough on Vachon for my taste. At least, not that wasn't romance-driven or that somebody was attempting to shoehorn into a romance. Something about just_ him _would be nice._

When he thought about it afterwards, which was seldom, Javier could never quite figure out what the mysterious feather-cloaked woman had thought she was doing, simultaneously bringing across two men who had been trying, with all their might, to kill each other. They were mortal enemies. It was inevitable that they would be _immortal_ enemies. Yet she gave them the same eternal orders: to protect those who loved life.

Well, _he_ had loved life. At any rate, he had loved _his_ life. There were bad times, of course: heat and hunger and horseflies. But he had volunteered for Pizarro’s service because he longed for adventure and battle, just as much as he hoped for gold. (Oh, they had certainly found gold!) And he had found equal pleasure in the company of his fellows in their quest to conquer the barbarian for the empire of Spain and bring the pagan to Christ. When the woman in the feather cloak brought him across to the world of the night, she took from him all of that life that he loved. 

That he had, at the time, been mortally wounded and would have lost that life anyway was something he ignored, quite deliberately. Occasionally, very occasionally, it did occur to him that she must equally have taken from his enemy a life that _he_ had loved; but Javier never dwelled on that. He had no appetite for seeing the foe as a man like himself. That sort of thing weakened a soldier; and it was many, many years before he stopped thinking of himself in those terms.

 _«¿Por qué me sigues?»_ he asked once, when the Inca had found him yet again. He got no answer—or, at least, none that he could understand. That was before the other man learned Spanish, of course. Once he did, he harangued Javier with his notions of duty. Just _why_ the two of them should follow some mad crusade simply because, by chance, they had been turned into vampires by a woman in a fancy cloak was something that the Inca never bothered to explain. To him it was obvious. To Javier it was ridiculous. There was no possible compromise between them: they did not speak the same language. Literally, really.

For a few ignorant days, before he realized the impossibility, he had simply returned to the army. By then, the enemy had attacked and been slaughtered, so no one bothered to ask if he had got the message through. He had been greeted by companions in arms ebullient in victory. Only a few days later, he had been forced to leave. 

The Inca came upon him a day later in the forest. 

Javier had thought him dead: had he not thrust him through the chest? But, of course, it is very much harder to kill the _un_ dead. 

Already, even then, the man had got his crazy notions into his head—not that Javier could understand a word he said, jabbering on in his own lingo. Eventually though, looking back, he pieced much of it all together. The feather-cloaked woman had given both instructions on how to live their undead lives. To the Incan warrior he had fought, she spoke in his own language. (To the Spaniard, now linked through blood, her tongue had only _seemed_ his own.) But she shared more than speech with the Inca: they shared belief. Had she seemed to him to be the avatar of one of his goddesses? Javier had never asked, and did not know; but, after so many years of intermittent, reluctant contact with the man, he suspected now that some such influence was at work on the Inca. At any rate, he took her ‘eternal orders’ as gospel. 

Javier was a good Christian—or, at least, a bad Christian—and knew better.

That time, the Inca had not got a broken branch through the chest but a stout Spanish spear. Unfortunately, Javier had not yet known the need to skewer him through the heart with wood, and did not drive home the shaft, but merely the head. The Inca recovered and followed, and caught up again a week later.

Javier headed north, randomly at first, but then aiming for Mexico, where Pizarro’s forces had gathered before setting forth. The Inca, who should have stayed in his own territory, insisted on trailing him, mile after mile, year after year. They passed through Mexico, went east to Florida, and then further north again. Here they came to lands where the _Ingléses_ had settled, and that tongue was as strange to Javier as it was to the Inca. But a few nights and meals later he was fluent, though traces of an accent remained for about a decade.

Once or twice, he thought to turn and slay his pursuer; but the other was too skilled and wary. If _he_ had been trying to kill Javier, it would have been another matter: they would perforce have come to battle. However, not since being brought over had that been the Inca’s intent. He wanted to...to...to _convert_ the Spaniard. (Yes, that was the only true way to look at it.) Javier had never been as devout as he should have been; but he was no apostate. There was no place in Catholic creed for a pagan quest.

Besides, if it was supposed to be his duty to protect those who loved life, then that meant that he should protect himself! For _he_ loved life. However strange it had seemed at first to be a vampire, he had come to enjoy it: he could see like a cat; his strength was as the strength of ten; he neither aged nor sickened; and— _que era milagroso_ —he could fly! He _loved_ life. And, though it was true that the Inca was not trying to take life itself from him, he was most certainly trying to take _that_ life from him. Javier was _free_! He did not want to be chained to someone else’s ‘duty’.

****

He saw the explosion high above the Toronto skyline, and knew with sudden certainty that the Inca was dead. How he knew it, he did not understand. But he _knew_. The Inca was finally dead; and there would be no more pursuit. 

So many times, Javier and his crew had stayed their roaming life, settled in a city, and hunted idly. But, sooner or later his old foe always caught up. Javier would turn a corner and see the shadow of the poncho. (Oh, the poncho of his native land—so easy to spot—that the Inca always wore, wherever he was!) Or he would fly back to their squat one dawn, only to be confronted in his own lair by the Inca stepping out of the shadows, trapping him for the day so that they could talk. Not that Javier had any wish to discuss his life with that earnest, angry man. So instead it would be time, once again, to move on.

Years turned to decades, decades into centuries. Javier had thought their debate to be eternal. Now he knew it was not. The Inca had made his final argument; and there was no possible counter to _this_. Protect those who love life, indeed! 

“I was young,” he had said to Tracy, trying to explain himself. “I was young.”

But he was young no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks go to Google's auto-translate thingie—and apologies to anyone who actually speaks Spanish for real.


End file.
